Back in May we wrote about a website called Scrabulous where you could go to play the classic game of Scrabble. We mentioend at the time that there was also a version of it available on Facebook as a Facebook App, but we weren’t sure how long they were going to be around. The reason we said that was because Hasbro and Mattel had asked Facebook to remove it. The makers of Scrabble would have been smart to just acquire Scrabulous, but they didn’t. Instead they decided to take the time to build their own version which was recently released on Facebook.

Shortly after Hasbro and Mattel launched their own Facebook app, the Scrabulous app went unavailable to those in the United States and Canada this past week. Lots of their users were upset until Scrabulous came back under a new name with a new look and new rules. The game is being called Wordscraper and rumor has it that they changed the name of the game and the rules to help avoid brand confusion, something Hasbro and Mattel could go after them for.

I decided to install the new Wordscaper app on Facebook which consists of two games, Wordscaper Blitz (a fast paced word building competition in real-time) and Wordscaper regular which they describe as “a fantastic tool to build and play your own word game within seconds. Simply click on new game, build board/rules, and start playing. You can save your creations for future use, or share them with friends. Games are turn based and awesome fun.”

Some Scrabulous fans have already expressed some disappointment in the new Wordscraper offering saying it’s just not the same, which it isn’t. The good thing though, is because users can create their own boards, they do have the option of making one that resembles Scrabble. At this point there are several thousand Wordscraper users which is far behind the half million users Scrabulous had.

To those going through Scrabulous withdrawals, remember that you do not need Facebook to play it, you just need to visit www.scrabulous.com where the game is still available to play.